Pitching
Write for Mad Honey Review
We commission four to six pieces a quarter. We pay, we edit hard, and we will not run anything that reads like an advertisement. If you have first-hand access, a language we lack, or a discipline we do not have on staff, we would like to hear from you.
The short version
- Pitch the argument, not the topic. “Mad honey in Nepal” is a subject; “the honey-hunting season has moved three weeks earlier in a decade, and here is what the harvesters say about it” is a pitch.
- We pay on acceptance, not on publication, and we pay for commissioned drafts we end up not running.
- We do not accept guest posts, sponsored content, or anything with a link requirement attached. There is no rate at which we will.
- Expect two rounds of edits and a fact-check that will ask you for every source, including the ones you thought were common knowledge.
What we will and will not commission
A plain table, deliberately not an accordion — hiding the “will not” half is exactly how the wrong pitches get through.
| Category | We are actively looking for | We will not take |
|---|---|---|
| Culture | Reported pieces with first-hand access: a season spent with Gurung honey hunters, the economics of a cliff harvest, how Turkish and Nepali producers see each other’s product. | Travel writing that treats a harvest as an adventure backdrop, or anything that photographs a climber without a signed agreement and a fee to them. |
| Science | Explainers by people who can read a toxicology paper properly — grayanotoxin pharmacology, assay methods, why batch variability is the central fact of this subject. | Summaries of a single small study written as though it settled something. Aphrodisiac claims presented uncritically. Anything extrapolating rat data to people without saying so plainly. |
| Law | Country pages written by someone who can read the statute in the original language and cite the instrument, not a news report about it. | Anything that reads as guidance for moving product across a border, or that describes how controls are enforced in a way a reader could use to avoid them. |
| Safety | Pieces built on clinical case literature and poison-centre data, written so a worried reader knows when to stop reading and call someone. | Any piece containing a dose, a quantity, a spoon count, or an answer to “how much”. This is not negotiable and is the single most common reason a pitch is rejected. |
| History | Careful work on the primary sources — Xenophon, Pliny, the Pontic accounts — including where the popular retelling has drifted from the text. | Recycled versions of the same three anecdotes with no return to the source. |
| Comparisons | Honest structural comparisons: what is actually known about each side, and where the evidence bases are not equivalent. | Comparison pieces that exist to conclude one product is better. We compare substances, never brands. |
Rates, rights and credit
What we pay
RateExplainers and comparisons: US$0.35 a word, 1,400–2,200 words. Reported features: US$1,200–2,000 flat, plus documented travel agreed in advance. Country law pages: US$450. Translation of an existing piece: US$0.12 a word.
Payment on acceptance, within 21 days, by bank transfer or Wise. If we commission and then do not run it, you keep the full fee.
What we take
RightsFirst publication rights and a non-exclusive right to keep the piece online and translated. You keep copyright. After 90 days you may republish anywhere you like, with a line pointing back to us.
We do not take work-for-hire and we will not ask you to sign away your name.
How you appear
CreditA full byline, a 40-word biography, one outbound link of your choosing, and your name on the page’s review history. Fact-checkers and translators are credited by name too.
If you have any commercial tie to the honey trade, we publish it in the byline. That does not disqualify you — undisclosed ties do.
On independence, stated plainly
What we claim, and what we do not
Some of the people who work on this site have professional connections to the honey industry — as beekeepers, as researchers funded by producers, as former employees. We name every one of them on the contributor page. What we claim is narrower and, we think, more useful than “no connections”: nobody has ever paid us to publish, feature, mention or leave out anything , we run no advertising, we take no affiliate revenue, and no commercial party sees a draft before publication. If that is not the arrangement you want to write under, this is not the place.
Send us a pitch
One pitch per submission, please. We reply to everything within three weeks; if you have not heard from us by then, chase us — it means something went astray, not that you were ignored.
Two field states worth building explicitly
Counter at the ceiling
1,200 / 1,200 characters — you have reached the ceiling. Trim before sending.
.errmsg colouring at 1,100 and blocks further input at the limit.File chosen, and a rejected file
harvest-footage.mov is not a format we accept. PDF, DOCX or Markdown only, up to 8MB.
.errmsg rather than silently.After you pitch
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Acknowledgement, automatic, with your reference number. |
| Weeks 1–3 | A real answer from a desk editor. Yes, no, or “yes but change this”. |
| On commission | A written brief with word count, deadline, fee and the sources we expect you to use. |
| Draft | Two edit rounds, then fact-check. Expect to supply every citation. |
| Publication | Byline, biography, one link, and your name in the review history. |
Ask before you write
Not sure whether an idea fits? Send two sentences to the desk editor rather than a full pitch. A no in a day is worth more than a maybe in three weeks.
